Author: Stilgherrian

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ABC Lateline on the leaked Internet blacklist, with me

Screenshot of Stilgherrian talking on ABC Lateline

I was on the ABC TV program Lateline last night as part of a story on the leaked Internet censorship blacklist.

While Senator Conroy is saying this isn’t the actual ACMA blacklist, it’s certainly indicative of the problems that come with a manually-maintained list of banned content — especially when it’s kept secret.

As I told Lateline, further leaks are inevitable.

As soon as you try and make something secret, there will be someone who wants it to be not secret. Either because they feel politically that it’s wrong that it’s secret, or for monetary gain. I’m sure that there are plenty of people out there who’d pay good money to get their hands on the current list and distribute it amongst people who would find the material of value to them.

The ABC has Real Media and Windows Media video streams plus a transcript, as well as a Flash video stream on the program home page. The vodcast will have downloadable MP4 and WMV files later today. And if none of them are suitable, there’s a copy on YouTube.

I’ll have more to say about this in Crikey later today.

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First interview with Fake Stephen Conroy

Screenshot from Stilgherrian Live episode 40

Episode 40 of Stilgherrian Live is now online for your viewing pleasure, including the very first interview with Fake Stephen Conroy aka Leslie Nassar.

Nassar, a Telstra employee, outed himself as FSC on Tuesday. Given that Senator Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, oversees telcos like Telstra, this created some complications. He now appears to be over the worst of what sounded like anger Tuesday night.

The phone conversation with Leslie Nassar is just over 12 minutes into the program.

Of course we also had “Cnut of the Week”…

Continue reading “First interview with Fake Stephen Conroy”

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Are you ready for episode 40?

Cnut of the Week graphic

Another Thursday, another edition of Stilgherrian Live scheduled for 9.30pm Sydney time. So that means — yes! — nominations are open for “Cnut of the Week”.

Who do you think is futilely resisting the tide of change? Nominations are open to people, organisations, nations and even abstract forces of nature — but your nomination has to reflect the news of the last week, and you have to give reasons. As usual, I’ll select the shortlist at 8.30pm Sydney time, and you can vote during tonight’s program.

Also, last week’s episode was the William Alan Shatner Commemorative Edition. Is there anyone or anything worthy of being commemorated this week?

Who do you nominate, and why? Don’t forget the “Why?”!

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Kids know better than the censors

Graph of knowledge versus danger, showing the censors assuming knowledge increases danger, whereas kids know knowledge decreases danger.

I haven’t visited Indexed in ages, but this image from last month says it all, eh?

The censors would treat us all like children. They imagine we’re unable to make our own decisions That unless “They” make the decisions for us — secretly and unaccountably — then we will succumb to the danger.

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Is the Victorian Government running without data backups?

Crikey logo

In Crikey yesterday, I wrote that we’d received information that all is not well at CenITex, the Victorian Government agency which provides IT services to six out of 10 state departments. Our tipster’s more serious allegation is that there hasn’t been a full data backup in more than a year, and that “everyone in CenITex is aware of this”.

“Some time ago, what was the Shared Services Centre realised they were unable to back up all the data they manage for the participating departments in the overnight time window,” they told Crikey.

“For over 12 months they have been taking only incremental backups… There is no disaster recovery in place. Everyone in CenITex is aware of this and are told to ‘shut up’.”

The article isn’t behind the paywall, so read it in full.